President Obama has a chance to craft a second-term legacy on climate change even as the rest of his agenda runs aground in Congress. Gun control legislation is dead; immigration reform is on life support; and reaching a fiscal deal with Republicans appears to be a long shot.

The second terms of the latest three presidents have not been successful. Bill Clinton was impeached after his infamous lie to Americans, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman." George W. Bush was blamed for the postwar violence in Iraq. Barack Obama's scandals -- with his accompanying "limited hangout" denials -- are ruining his second term: the growing IRS messes, the Associated Press monitoring, the NSA embarrassments, the Benghazi killings, the Syria bluster and backdown, and, of course, the Obamacare fiasco and the misleading statements about it. What are other common denominators of this collective tenure of our...

Like an onion being peeled, each week seems to reveal new layers of odious conduct by the Obama Administration that increasingly offends the senses. Only five months into the second term of the hope and change presidency, few are hopeful of any positive change. The scandals that have dominated the headlines should concern all Americans, regardless of political persuasion. So much baggage so early in a second term presages only more scandal and acrimony. And there’s reason to be suspicious that we’re in for more of the same. At first we were told that the Benghazi attack was carried out...

WASHINGTON - Americans are by nature an optimistic, hopeful people, but the persistently dismal economy of the Obama years has crushed that spirit to debilitating levels. As President Obama plunges into his second, four year term, Americans are more depressed about the future than at any time since the Carter years, according to the Gallup Poll. Only 39 percent of Americans rated the nation's climate as positive, the lowest level Gallup has recorded since the end of Jimmy Carter's single term in office in 1979. That's when inflation was soaring and the U.S. economy was in shambles. Only 48 percent...

The lesson from the State of the Union address is this: Barack Obama has no second term agenda. Oh, sure, he campaigned furiously for the job, starting in about January of 2011. But his campaign almost never outlined his plans for a second term, focusing instead on interest group payoffs and demonization of his rival. Late in October of 2012, as if recognizing that they'd forgotten to attend to it, the Obama campaign released a 20-page glossy handout called a "blueprint for America's future." It featured splashy photos of the president on nearly every page, along with generic promises like...

Rarely have second terms lived up to the hopes and expectations of presidents or their electorates. FDR's began with an attempt to pack the Supreme Court by adding new justices and a second Depression of 1937. He was rescued only by the war in Europe in 1939 and the GOP's nomination of "the barefoot boy from Wall Street," Wendell Willkie. What can be called Harry Truman's second term was a disaster. In 1949, the Soviets exploded an atom bomb and China fell to Mao. In 1950, the Rosenbergs were convicted as atomic spies for Stalin and North Korea invaded the...

A rule of the modern age: all confident, reelected presidents trip up in the second term. LBJ was sunk by Vietnam. Reagan faced Iran-Contra. Bill Clinton had his comeuppance with Monica. George W. Bush was overwhelmed with the Iraqi insurgency and Katrina. And Obama will have his as well, obsequious media or not. Supposedly fundamental partisan swings of an era usually prove transitory: LBJ’s landside led to Nixon four years later, whose landslide then led to Carter in 1980, whose supposed new politics of humility and apology led to Reagan, whose small government-paradigm shift nonetheless by 1992 gave us Clinton,...

President Obama is putting a symbolic twist on a time-honored tradition, taking the oath of office for his second term with his hand placed not on a single Bible, but two -- one owned by Martin Luther King Jr. and one by Abraham Lincoln.

The second-term curse goes like this: A president (e.g., Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and so on) wins reelection, but then his presidency implodes over the next four years — mired in scandals or disasters such as Watergate, Iran-Contra, Monica Lewinsky, the Iraqi insurgency, and Hurricane Katrina. Apparently, like tragic Greek heroes, administrations grow arrogant after their reelection wins. They believe that they are invincible and that their public approval is permanent rather than fickle. The result is that Nemesis zeroes in on their fatal conceit and with a boom corrects their hubris. Or is the...

After failing to deliver a line by line economic plan, the Obama campaign stepped up to the plate this week and delivered a glossy memo with 27 points on how he would use a second term in office. It's called The New Economic Patriotism: A Plan For Jobs & Middle-Class Security and millions of copies have been printed and shipped off to swing states. The plan is broken up into seven different parts, focusing on topics that include manufacturing, energy, small businesses, education, taxes and the deficit, healthcare, and Medicare and Social Security. While a lot of crucial details are...

If you suffered whiplash after Team Obama's sudden change in strategy after the last debate, you weren't alone. After waiting until almost literally the last moment to release Barack Obama's second-term agenda, suddenly the campaign rushed out an ad and a 20-page booklet that consists of mostly full-color pictures out to the press --- not coincidentally, the day after the last debate in which Obama might have been able to make its case to a national audience. Politico reports that few are impressed with this move, not even Obamaâ€™s fellow Democrats: Everything was going great for Barack Obama until about...

MANCHESTER, N.H. — Ask voters to describe what a second Obama term would look like, and even some of the president’s most ardent supporters have a hard time painting a picture. “I don’t know,” said Cynthia Malbon of Manchester. “I’m skeptical that anything much is going to happen. It’s probably going to be worse next time around.” Mrs. Malbon was attending a rally with the president Thursday in Manchester, as President Obama tried to answer criticism from Republican nominee Mitt Romney — highlighted again in the GOP challenger’s first rally after Tuesday evening’s debate — that the president lacks an...

Former Israeli delegate for Congressional matters in Washington and a top expert on relations with the U.S., Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger, thinks Israeli fears of a hostile second term Obama presidency are overblown. In an interview with Arutz Sheva, Ettinger explained that contrary to popular perception, "The bottom line is that a second term president is always weaker than a first term president. This is true for all second term American presidents other than one – James Monroe. A second term president becomes less and less relevant for both chambers of Congress from the day of his reelection. This this...

How will he tax us? Let us count the ways: • Most basic, of course, will be an increase in tax rates. Those paying 33 percent will now pay 36 percent. People paying 35 percent will now pay 40 percent. Most people accept and expect that Obama will raise these brackets if he is reelected. But they don’t realize what else he will do. • As he advocated in the 2008 campaign, he will eliminate the ceiling on wages that must be taxed for Social Security. Currently, wages are taxed at 6.2 percent (now, temporarily, at 4.2 percent) up to...

In Friday’s Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan takes a look at President Obama’s Martha's Vineyard vacation and speculates on his thoughts in view of declining poll numbers, and disillusionment among his supporters. "How could he not be depressed? He has made big mistakes since the beginning of his presidency and has been pounded since the beginning of his presidency. He's got to be full of doubts at this point about what to do. His baseline political assumptions have proved incorrect, his calculations have turned out to be erroneous, his big decisions have turned to dust...." "Nothing worked! And nothing's going...

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama is getting ready to make one of Washington's worst kept secrets official: He wants a second term. Democratic officials familiar with the plan say Obama will file 2012 campaign papers with the Federal Election Commission as early as this coming week. It's a long-anticipated but formal step that will allow him to start raising money for the campaign, which will be based in Chicago. The fundraising effort has begun. Obama raised $1.5 million at a Democratic fundraiser in New York City this past week and he'll headline events in the coming weeks in Chicago,...

Wasnâ€™t that the message of the midterms, especially after Barack Obama went out of his way to defend Democrats by warning voters that his agenda was at risk? In this case, it was the same as waving a red cape in front of a bull â€” or a whole Pamplona village of them. Quinnipiacâ€™s latest survey shows that only 43% of voters say Obama deserves a second term, but that number changes a bit when specific alternatives are mentioned: President Barack Obama does not deserve a second term, American voters say 49 â€“ 43 percent, and he is in a...

After 5 years of enduring enjoying my vitally important yet otherwise meaningless ramblings, I thought the time was right for me to sit back and let you have your say. From time to time, I will pose a question for discussion and debate. Post your opinions and P.O.V.'s in the comments section. For your consideration: Will Obama serve a second term?

Gov. Sarah Palin will resign her office in a few weeks, she said during a news conference at her home Friday morning. Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell will be inaugurated at the Governor's Picnic at the end of the month, Palin said.

I planned to write today's commentary on the state budget, but then I read Assemblyman Chuck Devore's e-mail to his supporters that Nicholas Romero posted yesterday afternoon and realized that there wasn't much to say beyond what DeVore wrote (or the San Diego U-T or the OC Register). But I do have a few thoughts on the matter. While the Legislature and the Governor can campaign this year as having passed and signed the state budget into law before July 1 as required by the state's constiution, no one should be throwing a party. Sure, this year's budget is not...

The Hundred Days is indelibly associated with Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the Thousand Days with John F. Kennedy. But as of this week, a thousand days remain of President Bush's last term -- days filled with ominous preparations for and dark rumors of a preventive war against Iran.The issue of preventive war as a presidential prerogative is hardly new. In February 1848 Rep. Abraham Lincoln explained his opposition to the Mexican War: "Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion and you allow him to do so whenever he may...

WASHINGTON -- Everybody in Washington's Republican political community was well aware that any changes George W. Bush made in his White House staff would not constitute a shake-up. What nobody expected was that Josh Bolten, in essence a professional bureaucrat, would be promoted to chief of staff. Yet, this selection becomes understandable as a confirmation of Karl Rove's supremacy in the White House.Rove holds the mundane titles of senior adviser to the president and deputy chief of staff, but scarcely anything happens in the Bush administration without his approval. Now he is more influential than ever. Andrew Card, the departing...

Now the question is whether Card wanted to quit his job or whether he needed to. The White House announced Card’s resignation on Tuesday and his replacement, budget director Joshua Bolten. Card first offered his resignation three weeks ago, according to the White House. That was just after the first polls showed just how much the White House was bleeding support after the Dubai ports story. A CBS poll gave Bush a job approval rating of only 34 percent and a personal favorability rating of 29 percent. (NEWSWEEK’s poll later showed the president with a 36-percent approval rating.) Bush won...

Like few presidents before him, President Bush was poised for a consequential and potentially quite successful second term. It hasn't worked out that way (so far). Bush made one strategic error in 2005, guessing wrongly that the country was adult and serious enough to reform Social Security. Now he faces at least two immediate challenges: immigration and the Dubai ports flap. Let's start with immigration, which the Senate is slated to take up in late March. On immigration, Bush is not a conventional conservative or any other kind of conservative. His instinct is to sympathize with immigrants. Bush believes that...

There may be 26 holiday parties in 21 days at the White House this month, but the mood in the West Wing is anything but merry. True, President Bush's recent Iraq speeches have put the White House back into comfortable blasts of campaign mode, but a lot of staff members say that they are feeling burned out and beaten down. So talk has intensified after a miserable year - Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, the C.I.A. leak investigation, Iraq - about staff changes and who may be leaving in January. "I hope you know that coming into a new year, some people...

There Has Never Been a Good Second Term Caspar Weinberger, 12.12.05, 12:00 AM ET This is one of those myths that takes root in the minds of various columnists and "thinkers" and is repeated so often that the mere frequency of the repetition seems to make it true. The fact is, there have been several Presidents who have had good second terms. • George Washington, most historians agree, would have been reelected to a third term had he wanted one. The few internal disputes that occurred during his second term were nothing that would have put off the voters. But...

After a rocky start, President Bush is scoring legislative wins that could be important tests of his ability to push laws through Congress in his second term. While his centerpiece proposal to restructure Social Security continues to languish, Bush's close victory on a trade bill and his progress on energy and highway legislation are quieting talk that he is a lame duck already. His nomination of conservative federal appeals court Judge John Roberts to the Supreme Court also seems to be on track, despite skirmishing with Democrats over access to papers from Roberts' work as deputy solicitor general in the...

WHITE HOUSE President Bush is shrugging off the polls showing his job approval rating at low ebb. At a news conference with Iraq's visiting prime minister, Bush jokingly suggested the word "quagmire" to a reporter asking about a possible "second-term slump." The president says he knows U-S troops have a difficult mission in Iraq against a bloodthirsty and determined enemy. And he says on domestic issues, he's asking Congress to "take on some big tasks." He says he's not surprised his idea for a Social Security overhaul has met stiff resistance from lawmakers. Bush added: "This is a time of...

Isn’t it amazing how many wonderful things former President William Jefferson Clinton would have done for this world if it wasn’t for the uncalled-for meddling of Special Prosecutor Ken Starr? The most recent such revelation suggests that Mr. Clinton would have reformed Social Security in his second term if he had not been distracted by those dastardly and unnecessary impeachment proceedings. Such are the proclamations in a San Francisco Chronicle front-page story entitled "Social Security rehab died first under Clinton.”http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/04/11/MNGKIC697J1.DTL To begin with, the Chronicle’s Carolyn Lochhead states that saving Social Security from imminent insolvency was a key initiative of...

WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS, W. Va. - President Bush rallied congressional Republicans on behalf of his second-term program on Friday, saying, "I think we've proven to the country we know how to set an agenda and work together to achieve it." He also gave a brief preview of the State of the Union address he will deliver on Wednesday: "I will remind the country we're still at war. I want to thank the Congress for providing the necessary support for our troops who are in harm's way." Bush spoke at a luncheon GOP retreat at a time when his proposal to...

I picked up the Village Voice for the first time in years this week. Couldn't resist the cover story: "The Eve of Destruction: George W Bush's four-year plan to wreck the world." Oh, dear. It's so easy to raise expectations at the beginning of a new presidential term. But at least Mr. Bush has a four-year plan. Over on the Democratic bench, worldwise, they don't seem to have given things much thought. The differences were especially stark this past seven days: In the first half of the week, Senate Dems badgered the incoming secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice -- culminating...

THE MUSIC has stopped, the flower arrangements have wilted, and the 2,000 police who came from all over the country to aid the 4,000 Washington cops and the military to maintain security have gone home, as have the 12,000 Texans and Texan wannabes who consumed 21,000 enchiladas at the Black Tie and Boots Ball. Now all the president has to do is govern. Tony Blair once said that governing is a lot harder than campaigning, so now comes the hard part for George Bush. If the president were a Stephen Sondheim fan, he might have adopted the theme from Gypsy...

Top Ten Bush Goals For His Second Term 10. Fewer idiotic remarks; more hilarious pratfalls. 9. Add mother Barbara to Mount Rushmore. 8. Combine Nebraska and Kansas into new state: Nebransas. 7. Spice up boring state dinners with tasty fish sticks! 6. Improve communication skills from poor to fair. 5. Catch up on his "Smokey And The Bandit" collection. 4. Get Ray Stevens to write some funny lyrics for "Hail To The Chief" 3. Ride every roller coaster in the country. 2. Install remote-activated button in Oval Office so he can blow stuff up right from his desk! 1. Begin...

PRESIDENTIAL second terms usually end in fail ure. Since 1900, only Teddy Roosevelt could boast of a second term that was as good or better than his first. Woodrow Wilson lost Congress, then couldn't bring America into the League of Nations. FDR, whose third term was a success, failed to pass anything in his second after he alienated Congress by trying to pack the Supreme Court and purge recalcitrant Democrats. Harry Truman's popularity plunged over Korea, as Lyndon Johnson's did over Vietnam. Ike had two recessions and a hospitalization. Richard Nixon resigned. Ronald Reagan had Iran-Contra, and Bill Clinton was...

Washington -- Four more years of President Bush in the White House is a prospect that instills hope in some and fright in others. Yet Bush's influence is likely to extend well beyond January 2009, when his second term officially ends. From reshaping the Supreme Court and American foreign policy to transforming Social Security, the tax code and environmental laws, Bush has an opportunity to put his imprint on policies for generations to come.

Bush Not Screwing Around On Making "Ownership Society" A Reality President Bush is moving quickly to create a new, tighter and more disciplined domestic policy team to pursue transforming the way Americans save for retirement, pay taxes and seek legal damages.Convinced his leadership style and policy vision were vindicated by the election results, Bush is aggressively targeting these domestic programs for the second term by essentially replicating the formula he used to reshape foreign policy in the first. This includes creating a small, loyal and trustworthy team to press for sweeping changes largely dictated by the White House.To build...

By Washington standards, Mr. Bush is a misfit. He's different. He barely socializes at all and on weekends and holidays makes a beeline for Camp David or his ranch in Crawford, Texas. He'd rather invite Christian musician Michael W. Smith and his wife to the White House for dinner than eat out. If Mr. Bush really wanted to soothe establishment types, he'd invite them to state dinners at the White House, after which their names would be in the paper. But he's held fewer state dinners than any president in memory. Mr. Bush is also a seriously religious man in...

As President Bush plans his second term, he should take a bold internal step: Fire the White House press office.It is hard to argue with success. The president was reelected more comfortably than even his supporters expected. Still, he suffered enormous headaches all year and surely will endure more migraines if he keeps the media team that has so ill-served him.Bush's press officers surely are diligent patriots who do the very best they can. That's the problem. It is hard to identify a recent chief executive who struggled so hard to communicate. True, Bush is no Ronald Reagan. But that...

Measured another way, Bush won 53% of the 538 electoral college votes available this year. Of all the chief executives reelected since the 12th Amendment separated the vote for president and vice president — a group that stretches back to Thomas Jefferson in 1804 — only Wilson (at 52%) won a smaller share of the available electoral college votes. In the end, for all his gains, Bush carried just two states that he lost last time. Another trend explains why all of this might matter to more than just historians: Throughout American history, the reelection of a president has usually...

Second Term, Second Chance Saturday, November 06, 2004 By Radley Balko President Bush is now the first president since his father in 1988 to win the majority of the popular vote. Both houses of Congress are now under Republican control. With this decisive victory, Bush no longer has to fight the “selected, not elected” rhetoric of 2000, nor does he have to worry about a divided Senate or his own re-election. So what should a second Bush term look like? The president's own campaign promises would be a good place to start. During the campaign, President Bush said he’d like...

Fellow countrymen: At this second appearing to take the oath of the presidential office, there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement, somewhat in detail, of a course to be pursued, seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush is making an unprecedented request to use up to $1 million budgeted for a possible presidential transition to train top officials who would join his administration if he should win a second term. The proposal, which will require Congress' approval, is the first time a president has sought to use public transition funds to prepare officials to enter a re-elected administration, White House officials and others say. Critics say the money should come from existing agency budgets, especially as Bush is proposing to curb spending for many programs because of soaring federal deficits. The White...